Studying Buddhism in Practice

"This volume assembles interesting and colorful pictures of Buddhism as actually practiced by ordinary and ordained people alike. The first-person narratives by long-term specialists draw the reader into sites such as towns and villages, temples and pagodas, funeral grounds and pilgrimage treks. The informative accounts underscore the cultural diversity of Buddhist practices and the importance they hold for the practitioners." - Martin Baumann, University of Lucerne, Switzerland

"This text stands out with its unique dual focus on Buddhist practices and on the practices of those who study Buddhism. Readers will learn much from the contributors’ descriptions of an array of Buddhist rituals and frank reflections on the scholarly methods they have deployed in their fieldwork around the world." - Christopher Ives, Stonehill College, USA and author of Imperial-Way Zen

"In less than 200 pages, this book succeeds in achieving its aims, providing a pioneering and rich account of contemporary Buddhism around the world. Its pedagogical value is clear, but the book’s worth is more than that of a teaching tool. This publication will certainly attract the attention and interest of specialists of Buddhism and, more broadly, sociologists of religion who will also be interested both in the diversity and complexity of Buddhism across different contexts and in the interdisciplinary dimension of the study of religious phenomena that this book illustrates and promotes." – Florence Galmiche, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), France